Adventis CG

Objective

Adventis CG, a Financial Modeling Certification program that prepares undergraduate students for careers in investment banking, private equity, & other fields by teaching practical, hands-on financial modeling & valuation skills, began a partnership with BuildThis back in March of 2016 after an increasingly difficult relationship with their previous development agency. BuildThis inherited a “frankenstein” CodeIgniter-based application that was in need of some TLC. Over the past several years, BuildThis has completely rebuilt the application – moving to a more powerful & supported framework, developed & implemented additional functionality & features, & continue to work with Adventis CG leadership to craft the direction of the application & business strategy.

Scope

The functional requirements of the project have shifted dynamically over the course of our relationship. When BuildThis & Adventis first began working together, the functional requirements were:

Restructure the relationship of core data within the application to communicate effectively with each other.

Re-develop the system to no longer treat courses as single days of instruction but multi-date bootcamp workshops.

Allow admin more autonomy within the system to create courses & interact with individual user records to provide refunds, add users to courses without payment, or to move a user as a registrant from one course to another.

Over time these functional requirements matured to adding or optimizing features:

Utilize a CMS (WordPress) so that internal staff members could be trained to manage the website’s front-end content.

Uphold consistency with the company’s branding and digital requirements.

Develop a single platform that could support a dozen regions globally, with separate administrative dashboards and unique frontend content.

Create a ‘low barrier to entry’ process to add additional locales.

Migrate select data and content from the legacy site to the new platform.

Allow registered users of the company to sign on the to platform with their account credentials via SSO.

Allow registered users of the company to subscribe to relevant content from the website within their company-wide account preferences and pass that data to WordPress via an API.

As they are created within the website, pass subscription options via an API to the company-wide accounts platform, to be made available for users to subscribe to.

Send daily notification emails to users containing published content pertaining to their preferences.

Improve upon the SEO of the legacy platform.

Process

After BuildThis’ introductory meetings with Adventis leadership, the process began with a review call with the previous development team to uncover their logic for the initial development of the application & identify known pain points.

At this point, the main goal was to address ‘fires’ & major issues within the system. Later on BuildThis was able to go back to the drawing board to complete a full Discovery, Design, Development, & Deployment cycle to develop the application from the ground-up & leave the legacy software behind. This phase included:

New Database architecture

Content structuring

User Flows

Data Flows

The Design phase, and how design is used ongoing within the BuildThis-Adventis relationship for feature & functionality improvements, includes:

Adventis & BuildThis Design sessions

Initially designing the web style guide to provide standards for design throughout the application

Visual Designs & User Flows for particular views & actions

BuildThis follows an Agile development process while working with Adventis, breaking down feature requests & new functionality into Project Sprints generally 2-4 weeks in length depending on the scope of the sprint. The relationship requires a high level of communication & involvement from the Adventis team. Our ability to collaborate & co-create effectively with Adventis is paramount to the success of the application & our working relationship.

BuildThis uses its internal project management system, Function Point, to manage and track Adventis deliverables. BuildThis & Adventis ‘stay on the same page’ via a shared Development Plan that is updated & reviewed during every weekly status meeting.

Analysis

The nature of BuildThis’ relationship with Adventis allows us to continue to improve the application from feature releases to optimization as Adventis progresses toward their business goals.

The newly developed application is fast, secure, & significantly easier to use by both the student & the admin.

Future/ Current Relationship

It doesn’t stop here! BuildThis & Adventis have a mutual respect for one another’s contributions to the betterment of the Adventis application & the Adventis business as a whole. Adventis has lofty goals for the scope & functionalities needed within the application & BuildThis is thrilled to be a part of for the long term.